Friday, 28 June 2013

Sometimes the setting is so integral to a
novel it becomes one of the characters defining the story. In other words, you
could not transport the action to another location and still have the same
book. Death in Venice comes to mind, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums, Burmese Days and so on. Robert Frost’s
poems could not be as effective and moving were they removed from rural life in
New England. There are many examples.

Yet some of the greatest works of
literature are not defined by their locale or period. Shakespeare’s plays can
and have been performed far from the setting Shakespeare intended. Coriolanus has recently been transferred
to the Balkans, Romeo and Juliet to a
Miami-resembling Verona Beach. This has not detracted from their universal
themes.

The same is not true though for many a
work of literature and the description of the setting leaves as much impression
on the reader as the characters or plot.

The Windmills of La Mancha

Have you ever gone on a pilgrimage to a setting
because it came to life so clearly between the pages of a book you just had to
see it for yourself? I once travelled through Spain in search of the towns and
villages on the plains of La Mancha where Don
Quixote is set. The journey turned into something of a wild goose chase
through this windswept desert like region as the exact locations Cervantes
based his story on had eluded historians for four centuries, and although we visited
interesting villages, none of them exuded a romantic aura associated with a
chivalrous knight. The town of Villanueva
de los Infantes has since been designated as The Place in La Mancha referred to at the start of Cervantes’
novel. It’s an unremarkable birthplace, but perhaps that was Cervantes’
intention suggesting a courageous knight was unlikely to emerge from such a
place.

Unimpressive with harsh environmental
conditions, the dry arid plains of La Mancha and their windmills are nevertheless
integral to the story and the ride of the delusional Don Quixote and his
sidekick Sancho Panza through the dusty terrain is what makes the story.

Sometimes places live up to expectations
and sometimes they don’t. Two things drew me to Tasmania last January. One: the
incredible art gallery, MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art. A limestone cavern
filled with spectacular works of art, it is an experience and an education that
lives up to expectations. Two: the wild bush setting of Matthew Kneale’s English Passengers, a spectacular journey into primeval Tasmanian forest, that is terrifying, dangerous and
impenetrable.

Tasmanian Wilderness

The setting takes over as character once
the expedition to find the Garden of Eden commences. The landscape plays tricks
on the characters and does not give up secrets readily. By observing the
terrain, the various parties believe they can find a way through the bush by
using geology and logical deduction but they become hopelessly lost to the
living, breathing power of the remote setting. The English passengers don’t fit
into these powerful surroundings and the physical difficulties the parties encounter
even contribute to mental breakdown.

That remote and impenetrable wilderness
still exists in vast tracts in southern Tasmania where there are thousands of
acres of land without roads and the only access is by foot. The startling thing
is, the menace and danger of the English
Passengers’ bushsetting remains
largely unchanged from when the story was set in 1857.

Wednesday, 12 June 2013

I met the Farangi Girl today. What a delight
she is. Engaging, personable and full of vitality, you’d never guess she was
the product of a tumultuous upbringing in pre-revolutionary Iran.

Speaking with knowledge, insight and
affection for a country most of us know little about, Dartnell conveys an
exotic aura of handsome British father, glamorous American mother and unconventional
Iranian upbringing.

Ashley Dartnell’s autobiographical, Farangi Girl, is a deeply
personal account of her life and that of her parents and siblings in a foreign land, Farangi being Farsi for foreign. Filled with intimate
details of the mother-daughter relationship, bankruptcy, prison

and poverty, affairs
and neglect, you can’t help wonder how these children emerged from such a childhood
to grow up and make successful lives. Their experiences clearly made them
strong and Ashley, always trying to prove herself, went on to graduate from Bryn
Mawr College, to gain an MBA from Harvard Business School and an MA in Creative
and Life Writing from Goldsmiths University.

Ashley with her glamorous but neglectful mother

No one outside the circle really knows
what goes on within a family. So the exposure of her and her brothers’
experiences and the descriptions of family dynamics make heart-rending reading
for outsiders, and surely for her family too. When asked how her family reacted
to her book, she is candid. At first there were objections as painful memories
were raked over, but eventually acceptance of the writer’s desire to write won
out and Ashley published her book.

So how do writers deal with the delicate
issue of recounting experiences shared within a family? Do you have a right to
use private details of cherished memories or relate events that have long been
buried and forgotten for good reason? Disclosure of private facts is tricky territory
and needs to be handled carefully and thoughtfully if it is not to end in
tears, recriminations or legal issues.

Monday, 10 June 2013

Critics gave the new film of The Great
Gatsby luke warm reviews, disappointed it did not capture the essence of this enduringly
popular novel. But weren’t they being a little harsh, after all, it would be just
about impossible to please the gate-keepers of this classic America novel,sometimes described as the greatest American novel ever written.

Regarded as Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, it
embodies the conflicts between the established sources of economic and cultural
power and those like Gatsby of humble origins who make good, becoming wealthy and
powerful in the process; in other words, it embodies the American dream that anyone
can make it against the odds of class, background and old money, an ideal which
is the linchpin of American society from its founding days to the present.

Leonardo DiCaprio shines as Jay Gatsby

Baz Luhrmann’s film captures well the
prosperous 1920s era, known for bootlegged liquor, organised crime, the birth
of jazz and the garish flapper culture. Fitzgerald’s themes of decadence and
idealism are well defined and the film is a sensory feast with glorious
settings and costumes which speak clearly of the opulence enjoyed by the
wealthy, of which Gatsby so desperately wanted to be a part, to impress and
possess the shallow Daisy.

Classic novels set the bar high

I guess this is where the critics have a
point. These in your face sights and sounds get in the way of the audience
thinking too hard. They distract in a way that doesn’t happen in the silence of
the mind when reading a novel. Reading The Great Gatsby is a cerebral, poetic experience, requiring the use of the intellect, watching the film is not.
Fitzgerald’s delicate prose is littered with abstract and indirect subtleties impossible to recreate in film. The language of the movie is blunt and to the point. The vagaries of the novel
which require input from the reader are spelled out in the movie so there is no
opportunity to participate as you might with the novel.

Luhrmann could have taken a different
approach and exchanged blatant reality for nuance, but then that’s not what he
does best. He doesn’t do subtle. His version is long (142 min) but entertaining
and never boring. Could he have kept his trademark shenanigans without losing
Fitzgerald’s layers? It would be a fine thing to see Luhrmann exchange style for
substance. As it is though, audiences and critics should accept a film will
never live up to the novel we place on a pedestal and just enjoy Luhrmann’s
artistic style, which does suit the prosperous era in which The Great Gatsby is
set.

To understand just how revered The Great Gatsby is, a first printing of an American first edition, with dust jacket, can be valued at up to US$750,000. Treated almost as holy writ, could any film maker do it justice? Luhrmann was brave to try.